Prior approaches to debugging and feature tracing are still reliant on tools such as “ping” and “trace route.” While such tools have proved useful in the past, the increasing complexity and intelligence of networks demands new tools to meet the demands of newly developed network features and capabilities. For example, prior to determining whether to employ automatic quality of service (auto QoS) functionality, it may be needed to verify the capabilities (features) of each device on the whole network or on the relevant portion of the network.
Some prior approaches employ “show version” software commands and subsequently map the results of the command back to a version where such feature support was implemented. These approaches are cumbersome and extremely time consuming.